


The Full Brigadoon

by mousapelli



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Hidden Village, M/M, Saeko's driving, Supernatural Elements, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 17:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12113289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: Ukai is a villager in an enchanted town that only phases into reality for one day every one hundred years. Takeda is the modern man who stumbles on the village and falls in love.





	The Full Brigadoon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psiten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psiten/gifts).



> Written for SASO Bonus Round 1 (AUs): prompt was basically Brigadoon, as described in the summary.

"This is ridiculous," Saeko says as she throws the car out of park and grinds back into reverse. But she says it like the kids on the team do, when they mean "I'm in if you are" or "we're gonna get busted" or "this'll be a great story eventually."

"Sorry for the trouble," Takeda says, feeling sheepish already. His hands clutch compulsively at his seatbelt as Saeko rounds the corner out onto the road and presses down the accelerator. "To drag you out at night, probably for nothing…"

"No way, it was real!" Tanaka pipes up from the backseat. He and Nishinoya are along for the fun of it, and maybe to help if Takeda doesn't recognize the way. Both of them are leaning far too forward for Takeda's tastes, their seat belts only across their laps, but he supposes they must both be used to Saeko's driving. "We were both there, too!"

"I hope it's still there," Nishinoya adds, his hair seeming to stand even more on end than usual, as if also excited. "I really want to play with them again! Tell her the story, sensei!"

"She's already heard it," Takeda protests, growing more sheepish by every meter they drive.

"Well, I want to hear it again!" Saeko says. She throws the car into third gear, flattening Takeda back into his seat. "So you were coming back from Interhigh preliminaries, right? On the team bus."

"Over the mountain!" Tanaka and Nishinoya chime in. They've heard and retold the story so many times it's almost set by now, like a ghost story 3rd years have taught to 2nd years so they'll torment the 1st years when it's their turn too.

And halfway down the mountain, the bus had broken down, in the middle of nowhere. Nobody could get any cell phone reception and the sun was already going down, and Takeda and his had been standing on the side of the road with his volleyball team around him, trying desperately to figure out what a proper adult would do in this situation so that he could fake his way through it.

And then a boy on a bicycle had screeched to a stop beside them, sending up a small dust storm from the roadside. He'd had an all black yukata, which Nishinoya sighed over the coolness of, and bright orange hair sticking out in all directions.

"Need some help?" he'd asked, cheerful as could be. "I'm heading home, and my town is just over that way."

So they'd ended up in Karasuno, a small town at the foot of the mountain where no town had ever been before, all the times Takeda had driven that road. Hinata—because of course the cheerful kid was named for the sun—had led them to old Ukai's place, who had explained that during the warring states era the town had prayed to be cut off from the chaos, and now only appeared for one day every fifty years or so. It sounded unbelievable, but the look of the place, everyone in yukata and nothing at all modernized, had been eerily convincing. They'd spent the evening teaching some of the teenagers volleyball with the ball that Daichi hadn't thought to put back on the bus, and had left the ball as a gift in the morning when they'd been ushered back out into the real world just before sunrise.

But the part Takeda couldn't get out of his mind was Ukai's grandson, not too much younger than Takeda himself, but hair bleached light from being out in the sun and hands rough from farm work as he thumbed tobacco into his pipe. Takeda had tried to picture him in modern clothing, but couldn't, the homespun blue yukata suiting him perfectly somehow. When he closed his eyes, he could still see Keishin's profile in the moonlight of Ukai's back yard, smoke trailing lazily up, pose lazy but eyes trained keenly on the teenagers as they shouted and slapped the ball back and forth.

Takeda can't get it out of his mind. Keishin telling him, voice like gravel as he knocked out his pipe against the porch step, "You could stay, y'know."

"But if it's every fifty years," Saeki asks, pulling Takeda out of his thoughts, "then it's way too early, isn't it?"

"Maybe so," Takeda agrees, the thought sitting like a rock in the center of his chest.

"It's about here!" Nishinoya called from the backseat, pointing. "That's the telephone pole Ryu took a whiz behind."

At least their timing is right, the sun just about to set behind the trees, the wind picking up. All four of them clamor out of the car and stand, listening to the rustle of trees. And then, so faint Takeda is sure he's imagining it, the whir of bicycle wheels.

When Hinata appears around the curve of the road, peddling for all he's worth, steering dangerously one-handed while he waves furiously, Saeko gasps like a ghost has appeared. Tanaka and Nishinoya are waving and hollering for all they're worth, but Takeda can barely hear anything with how loud his blood is rushing in his ears.

Hinata skids to a stop next to them, sending gravel skittering at their sneakers. "Hi! Ukai said you might be here. Ready this time?"

"Yes," Takeda says, squaring his shoulders. He turns to Tanaka and Nishinoya, apologetic even though he feels like his heart is going to pound out of his chest at any moment. "You'll tell the team, right? That I'm sorry I can't go to Nationals with you."

"Sensei?" Nishinoya asks, Tanaka speechless. All Takeda can do is shake his head. It feels awful, to tell them goodbye, to ask them to say the rest of his goodbyes for him, even the kiss on the cheek Saeko offers him, before she slaps him on the ass and tells him to get it, tiger.

Takeda's cheeks don't start to cool down after that almost the entire way to the village. Hinata walks his bicycle beside Takeda, unusually quiet. The woods get darker and darker as they walk, until Takeda can barely see Hinata's pale skin beside him, wondering at every step if a rock or root is going to spill him onto his face.

But then they clear the trees suddenly, and even the quarter moon is enough light to show them Keishin waiting for them on the road into town, smoke drifting up lazily from the pipe in his hand.

"Guess the old man was right," Keishin grunts, like it's totally annoying, but he's grinning. Takeda is smiling too, so wide, even when Hinata elbows him in the ribs and chuckles like a grade schooler. "You know, they say an outsider can only stay in Karasuno if they really love somebody on the inside. Not like, the place or some shit. An actual person."

"I hope so, because my ride already left." Takeda wants to throw his arms around Keishin, wants to do a lot of other things he hasn't dared think the whole way through yet, but he settles for reaching out to grab the hand that isn't holding Keishin's pipe. "So if I wake up in an empty field, I won't be best pleased."

Keishin laughs, a low rumble in his chest like distant summer thunder. He slides his fingers through Takeda's and squeezes them tight. "Think we can do something about that, sensei. At least until Hinata tells the rest of the hooligans you're here and they demand you teach them more volleyball."


End file.
